N˚ 001

The Art of Seeing Winners

A Room for Improvement

Adam Marelli x Art Photo Feature

Introduction

When I started this website in 2010, my vision was to create a space where photographers, both aspiring and professional, could share, learn, and experience the magic that ties us to our passions. At that time internet landscape was covered with equipment reviews, leading lines, and post production salvation that might rival the promises of some major religions.

Four years later, I like to think of this site as a reprieve from the gear mania and pseudo genre buzz (street photography, Im looking at you) where people can enjoy photography as a way to see the world with out the distractions of gear, the pressures of making a living, and the headache you get from staring at a computer screen for hours on end.

What happens when you take a good picture? Where does it go, who sees it, and who comes around to say, “Hey…not bad…you must have a really expensive camera?” Where would we be without the “like” button? Who knows…probably a much simpler place. But while there is no end in sight of social media, why not roll with the punches and use it all to our advantage.

Winners, Plural

My good friends over at Art Photo Feature (Vineet & Rohit Vohra) have wanted to run a collaboration to allow photographers, regardless of location, to learn the lost lessons of design. This fell perfectly in line with my own goals of an online series. Since they are based in India and I am in New York, it took me a few months to figure out how our communities could overlap, but after a lot of head scratching we have a solution.

APF and I decided to put together a friendly competition to run in conjunction with my new online photography classes “A Room for Improvement” where we can practice what we preach and learn a few things along the way.

The Structure

“A Room for Improvement” was conceived as a ten part series to introduce photographers to the fundamentals of design that painters, sculptors, and architects have used for hundreds, if not thousands of years to create master works. While it might take a little practice before you are churning out your own masterpieces, at least, with this series, you will started to understand how and why artists see differently than the rest of the world.

How it works

For each episode of A Room for Improvement, Art Photo Feature and Adam Marelli Workshops will host a competition. The theme of the competition is based on the episode. For the first competition, the theme was Light. As each new episode is released I will be announcing the competition here and APF will announce it on their Facebook Page.

APF will select the shortlist and I make the final sections.

Art Photo Feature Facebook Page

How to Enter

Entering the competition is completely FREE. All you need to do is subscribe to my YouTube page and join APF’s Facebook group where you can upload your entries.

Subscribe here on my YouTube Page to enter.

The Prize

For each theme there will be three winners. Why three winners? Because a photography cannot be scored like the Olympics. A good picture is worth a thousand words and they are impossible to numerically rate. So the top three win the respective episode of “A Room for Improvement.”

Collecting your Prize

The winners will be sent private codes to access the individual Udemy episode they have won.

Congratulations

Who is APF

If you have not heard of Art Photo Feature (APF, for short) check them out here…They are one of my favorite collectives of photographers and contributing photographers unified by passion. They are not an agency, not a museum, they are more like the extension of a club that only makes two requirements of their members…

The first is to produce the best images, in any genre, with minimal post production for the purposes of exploring the visual language.

The second (and far more challenging) is to read their rules for posting before putting up images on their Facebook page.

2 Responses to “A Room for Improvement No 001 Winners”

The notion of using the tools and ideas painters et al have been using for centuries is all over the web, but you’re the only fellow who actually asked some painters! Everyone else is all Golden Spiral! Rule of Thirds! which painters have typically never heard of, or think of quite differently.

Happy to hear you like the idea…I thought it would be a great way for everyone to participate and learn the other techniques that painters have used, not just the “mystical” ones that have little translation to photography.

The next competition will be announced next week, before I fly to Japan. New theme, new episode of A Room for Improvement, and a new batch of design exercises for everyone who joins.

From this point forward you can breathe nothing but the clean artistic air of design, without all the internet clutter.